Royal Irish awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross.

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LE

A major parade is to be held today, mark the disbandment of the Royal Irish Regiment's home service battalions.
Several thousand members of the regiment, and its predecessor the UDR, will attend the ceremony at Balmoral Showgrounds in Belfast.

The three home service battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment will be disbanded next July.

More than 60,000 men and women have served in the Royal Irish Regiment or the UDR since 1970.

Some 300 home service soldiers drawn from the Holywood-based 2nd Battalion, the Armagh-based 3rd Battalion, and the Omagh-based 4th Battalion will parade at the showgrounds.

They will be accompanied by musicians from the band of The Royal Irish Regiment and 100 former UDR soldiers of the Regimental Association.

Old-Salt

I seem to remember being told that the three Regular Battalions of the Queenâs Regiment were all in Belfast at the same time in the 1970âs. To mark the occasion and to exercise their Freedom of Belfast they held a snap parade. Three Battalions, Colours flying, bayonets fixed and drums beating. Hardly anybody knew about it, they just formed up and went.

Perhaps the RIR could do something similar as a last hurrah. Theyâve earned the right.

GCM

Together with its predecessor the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), the so-called home service battalions will have completed 36 years of unbroken operational service. It is a period marked by great sacrifice, but also controversy.

"As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her - her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye." Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

LE

Caught the tail end of R4 news. BBC coverage consisted of interviewing some SF git from an organisation that had Blanket in the title. He banged on about B specials and UVF and the BBC bloke let him. Briefer chat with some Colonel or other.